As a back-to-the-roots album which at the same time packs a vital contemporary relevance, Mira does everything you could ask and more. [Mar 2019, p.28]

Encore is a perfectly good record. ... But one can't help but wonder how Dammers' wayward genius might have added a level of glorious unpredictability to proceedings. [Mar 2019, p.22]

A worthy, if more subdued, companion to Kacey Johansing's The Hiding last year. [Mar 2018, p.37]

If Drift Code can't quite match the rural psychodrama of its predecessor, it boasts its own quizzical magic. [Mar 2019, p.32]

Production touches aren't enough to elevate a set of songs that when stripped to their skeleton are sufficient if unspectacular. [Mar 2019, p.32]

Now adds a shimmer of spiritual awaking to the mix. ... An energising release. [Mar 2019, p.27]

Abrasive album. ... Tracks like "Pleasure Seeker," "Oblivion" and "Power" demand the listener either sit up and take notice or run screaming for the hills. [Mar 2019, p.26]

It's Creevy's charismatically odd lyrics and playful, St. Vincent-style subversion of angsty feminine stereotypes on provocative curios such as "Daddi" that keeps us transfixed. [Mar 2019, p.26]

Gallipoli is the most acoustically rich Beirut album to date, with studio buzz and random dissonance deployed as musical texture more than ever before. [Mar 2019, p.35]

A stripped-down set of acoustic songs sung in a voice that is sometimes overly winsome but at its best is hauntingly ethereal. [Feb 2019, p.24]

On this sixth album, there's a deft combination of denseness and groove that is never easy to master, but also a freestyle improvisational quality. [Feb 2019, p.29]

The result is endearingly scattershot. [Dec 2018, p.39]

Now and then she's too laconic for her own good but the self-deprecating humour of "It's So Weird" and "Staying In" hits the mark. [Feb 2019, p.27]

There's a spiritual quality to these streams-of-conscious compositions, which sound open-ended as though she's posing questions to the woods around her. [Feb 2019, p.34]

He straddles the line between known and unknowable, and that's a mighty fine place to reside. [Feb 2019, p.28]

A further shift away from the full-throttle krautrock of their early years into something more sumptuous. [Feb 2019, p.37]

Like much of Kent's work, the mood is melancholy and the focus is on her intricate production. There's plenty to admire in Kent's elegant phrasing, her cello longing and mournful. [Feb 2019, p.27]

There are moments where gusto, melody and thunderous guitar riffs meet to powerful effect but there are some tired moments to wade through to get there. [Feb 2019, p.27]

Feedback-soaked rockers like "Little Drama" are played with maximum oomph, but much like, say, Ty segall, Krol laces his songs with all manner of sly twists and turns. [Feb 2019, p.29]

Apart from the odd off-kilter minor key melody, they sound anything but bereft as Bagg's dreamy soprano, layers of melodic synths and soaring strings cast a dramatically romantic sheen over their pain. [Feb 2019, p.30]

Psychedelic beguilement a la Syd Barrett and Wyatt-ish pastoralism bent into eccentric shapes figure, but variety is key. [Feb 2019, p.30]

The author's humanistic, heart-first approach, coupled with his songs' compellingly opaque expression and egoless playing makes reliability more rewarding. [Feb 2019, p.22]

The spacious, Neil Young-ian rumbling of the title track and the bulked-up power-pop of "Spiked Flower" both see co-founders Adam Franklin and Jimmy Hartridge venture beyond the template of Raise and Mezcal Head without making the faithful worry they've ditched their distortion pedals. [Feb 2019, p.34]

This is voluminous in length and style. [Feb 2019, p.33]

Rough-hewn thrills abound. [Jan 2019, p.21]

Painted Image is as stylistically omnivorous as it is emotionally acute. [Feb 2019, p.24]

Classical-inflected electronica, with nary a chrome-plated breakbeat in sight. [Feb 2019, p.34]

With Fool, his focus is as much on method as material. [Feb 2019, p.27]

It's good to hear him finally write and record with a proper band. About The Light is at its best when it takes advantage of this new freedom. [Feb 2019, p.29]

It's less punky and psychedelic than anything they've done before, sounding more like a piece of self-conscious, well-crafted Americana by, say Richard Hawley or Alex Turner. [Feb 2019, p.30]

Love Hates lacks some of the naive charm of their debut and a couple of attempts at Garbage-style industrial pop set the album off on the wrong foot. But the all-or-nothing passion that courses through "The Breath Of Light" and "For The Wild" is quite something. [Feb 2019, p.29]

BAG's core values remain intact, but it's an exhilarating advance. [Feb 2019, p.24]

This is no desperate grab at nostalgia, then, rather a chronicle of important personal moments reexamined through the lens of time. [Feb 2019, p.30]

The album is perhaps a little lacking in knockout tracks but instead highlights Bear's clear talent as a producer with a craft for melody and rhythm. [Feb 2019, p.37]

It's understated excellence at best, perhaps a little inoffensive at worse, and entirely a continuation of the aesthetic the Brooklyn-based guitarist has honed for the last two years. [Feb 2019, p.27]

Most consistently enthralling album thus far. [Feb 2019, p.36]

Violence, guilt, betrayal and despair assail singer-lyricist James Graham's protagonists, while Andy MacFarlane marshals something miasmic, sometimes glistening synth glides and doleful guitars, suggesting Johnny Marr's wilder Smiths experiments. [Feb 2019, p.37]

If the music at times fails to convey the particularities of her lyrics on the trip-hoppy "Memorial Day," Van Etten remains an insightful chronicler of small moments that produce overwhelming emotions. [Feb 2019, p.37]

Overall there's a warmth lacking on last year's lo-fi Swim Inside The Moon. ... Elsewhere, echoes of Bon Iver and label boss Sufjan Stevens suffuse "All Your Life," his rejection of suicide, while "Time's" whistled melody confirms his latent optimism. [Feb 2019, p.26]

[The union] is clearly well-judged. [Feb 2019, p.37]

Boone's soulful presence in the Delines brings a different slant to Vlautin's characters, her voice transmitting something more hopeful and tender. [Feb 2019, p.26]

Delightful for a dark night in. [Jan 2019, p.27]

Some of Deerhunter's prettiest songs to date. [Feb 2019, p.13]

Two decades on, the luxuriantly layered soft-rock production still sounds roomy and glossy, albeit a little ponderous in places. ... Expanded and enhanced. [Feb 2019, p.46]

Veers dangerously close to tastefully understated ethno-trance wallpaper on chiming, drowsy throbbers like "Zemlya." But thankfully Edwards is too smart to be seduced by the shallow allure of pointless beauty. [Feb 2019, p.32]

A pygmy in the grown-up pop world, maybe, but in his own tiny corner of the cosmos, a giant. [Feb 2019, p.30]

Throne might be her boldest and most intimate statement yet. [Feb 2019, p.29]

The overall effect is immersive, wallowing, sad but often beautiful. [Feb 2019, p.27]

Nova's smoky, sullen vocals sometimes sound a little stilted, but she surpasses herself on "You Wanna See My Teeth," a cinematic mini-symphony inspired by the killing of Trayvon Martin, which moves through nervy electro and anguished rock to screaming rage. [Feb 2019, p.30]

A strange, untethered creation. ... But when Romano Keeps it simple, he's terrific. [Feb 2019, p.32]

Uneven but mostly engaging third solo album. [Feb 2019, p.30]

A festive 10 tracks. [Feb 2019, p.29]

An understated debut of mature sophistication. [Feb 2019, p.27]

Multidimensional. ... This rotating playlist of styles and sincerity will rankle with some--it's very earnest about addiction, love and our internet selves--but rather that than banal conformity. [Feb 2019, p.23]

The album works in isolation but maybe watch the film on Netflix first. ... Tonally, we're in the territory of Nebraska, Tom Joad and Devils & Dust, but there's also the deep romantic melancholic tones of Darkness and The Rising. [Feb 2018, p.18]

Beautiful, weird and wasted, Songs For Judy never lets us forget it. [Jan 2019, p.28]

Working with producer Jack Splash, they craft a dense, bracing, kaleidoscopic avant-soul backdrop for frontman Paul Janeway's musings on religion, politics and family. [Oct 2018, p.32]

Bowles' music is rarely less than seductive, the product of both a gifted multi-instrumentalist and restless cultural forager. [Nov 2018, p.26]

Uncompromising, adventurous score. [Dec 2018, p.27]

Singing exclusively in Turkish, it's hard to judge her message, but her voice is a gloriously expressive instrument full of mystery. [Nov 2018, p.23]

A thunderous epiphany of overlapping guitars and in-your-face lyrics. [Jan 2019, p.27]

Trouble Anyway announces the arrival of an artist who fits neatly into no category but thrives in the inbetween. [Jan 2019, p.13]

The Black Album, dubs and all, could use some more of Perry's surrealist medicine. But it's hard to deny that ut's good to hear him in such healthy form. [Jan 2019, p.23]

Beguiling mix of gothic Southern soul and outlaw country. [Dec 2018, p.27]

His blazing guitar leads contrast with the sombre tone of the 20-track We're Your Friends, Man, the fragile-voiced Saloman haunted by third-age problems. [Jan 2019, p.19]

Wonderfully dark fourth album. [Jan 2019, p.22]

The greatest since he killed off Ziggy? Arguably, but certainly an autumnal peak.

Sinking Into A Miracle is absolutely beautiful--otherworldly, often, and quietly ecstatic, in its own, strangely pop way. [Jan 2019, p.17]

The likes of John Lee Hooker's "Dimples" and Sam Cooke's "Laughin' and Clownin'" are intimate, effortless-sounding exercises in sublime jazz phrasing, his voice at 73 as supple as ever. [Jan 2019, p.22]

Full of eerie trembles and trills, Camila De Laborde's voice is similarly ethereal, if sometimes numbed, and she and Daniel Hermann combine to create glistening, immersive soundscapes. [Jan 2019, p.19]

He's made one of his most uncompromisingly lovely albums, a tender notebook of pointillist electronics, deep waves of drone and ever ascending, yet melancholy, melody. [Dec 2018, p.23]

Melnyk conjures a world that is both sentimental and abstract--a safe space in which to lose yourself. [Jan 2019, p.22]

There's a welcome freshness to Sequence; it may be smartly, deftly constructed, but it feels free and open. [Jan 2019, p.23]

For all its old-time vibes, a typically inspired record from Ferry. [Jan 2019, p.21]

There's no central narrative to this anthology of psych-tinged, countrified canyon-rock. [Dec 2018, p.25]

Despite the addition of some burnished guitar licks, the results are as awful as you might expect and his one original composition, "For Love On Christmas Day," isn't much better. [Jan 2019, p.19]

Crowell conjures a collection both wryly whimsical and devastating sincere. [Jan 2019, p.19]

There are lots of lightly retro arrangements and nods to 1960s bubblegum pop. [Jan 2019, p.22]

A lovely record. [Jan 2018, p.22]

The end result creates an engulfing sonic swirl, recalling the enveloping work of Cluster and Tangerine Dream. [Dec 2018, p.24]

On Reflection can't make any grand claims to originality, but charms with its clarity and light. [Jan 2019, p.25]

The lowering, incantatory "Circles," suggesting Peggy Lee fronting a minimalist Warpaint, and the doomy rebetika of "Loving Loving" stand out, but there's much to admire. [Dec 2018, p.33]

Amid the superior pieces like "No Expectations" and more minor moments of parody and innuendo, jammed endings on songs like "Salt Of The Earth" embrace a real joy in improvisational ensemble playing. ... "Sympathy" also sits apart from the rest of the songs as a separate 12in, much as it towers above the rest of the songs on the album. [Jan 2019, p.40]

It's a tender manifesto of self-doubt, a shout fading into a murmur. [Jan 2018, p.16]

"Wolves Change Rivers" betrays his love for Erik Satie, but "For My Mother" [is] reassuring affection is unquestionably his own. [Jan 2019, p.21]

Gibson's follow-up to 2016's Empire Builder finds her tinkering with the complexion of her sound, bringing piano and strings to the surface, mostly at the expense of guitar. It turns out to be a clever fit for the songs. [Nov 2018, p.29]

Like Go-Kart Mozart or Billy Childish, Argos fashions lyrical witticisms from the commonplace. [Jan 2019, p.17]

Their most accessible and melodic yet. [Dec 2018, p.25]

A sumptuous set of gloriously gloomy ballads that emphasise Moss's expressiveness as a vocalist. [Dec 2018, p.28]

Shabason again blurs genre boundaries with impeccable judgement and such understatedly emotional approach that the tag "ambient jazz" sounds like a slight. [Jan 2019, p.25]

He overthinks the rambling "JTR" and overstuffs the messy collage "Monkey Man."[Dec 2018, p.33]

The outer skein of mystical mystery shelters a clutch of slyly insistent melodies. [Jan 2019, p.21]

It's a warmly pristine, groovily poignant set, with vocals pitched for gender neutrality and an ear for a great hook. [Jan 2019, p.23]

Simultaneously her most formally experimental and melodically palatable yet. [Jan 2019, p.25]

Every track hits its target. [Jan 2019, p.27]

The set's ordering is exemplary, especially given its size, but diving in at random reaps the richest rewards, throwing up unexpected complements and contrasts. ... It's a trip for devotees and newcomers alike. [Jan 2019, p.41]

And Justice For All remains their most pivotal and arguably their most divisive album. ... Lots of demos, rough mixes, studio jams and live numbers that show how powerful the new lineup sounded away from the studio. [Jan 2019, p.37]

This stripped-down set from the Palace/Bonnie songbook is a reminder of what a great singer Oldham has become. [Jan 2019, p.23]